What if you've taken the time to create a marketing plan but now you're so busy servicing your current clients that you're having a hard time keeping on track with your plan?

Is it okay to set the plan aside for awhile? After all you've got enough business to keep you busy. And, you're not sure you could handle additional clients right now anyway.

While marketing may not seem like a necessary activity when your business is going gang-busters, its only a matter of time before your lack of marketing starts to impact your business. 

Staying on top of your marketing plan, even when you're busy, ensures you always have a pipeline full of prospects and clients into your business.

While you may be busy right now, if you stop marketing for the next three months, you may find yourself high and dry when it comes to clients, because you've stopped the flow.

As an independent professional myself, I can totally relate to being too busy to market. It seems the days are never long enough to get everything on my to-do list done.  But as a marketing professional I know I cant afford to NOT get my marketing done.

So whats a busy gal (or guy) to do?!?

Here are 5 suggestions ? these are things I do and recommend to all my clients in my 10stepmarketing System. 

(1) If you havent already, create a marketing calendar. Schedule all of your marketing activities in the calendar according to how frequently you planned to do them in your marketing plan.

If you planned to do something monthly, enter it on the calendar once each month. Weekly? Enter it four times per month. Do this for every planned activity.

(2) Hang your marketing calendar over your desk on a bulletin board or on the wall. Make a habit of looking at it every morning. This way you won't have the problem of out of site out of mind.

I cant tell you how many clients Ive had whose marketing plans have ended up in a file folder in a drawer. You're certainly NOT going to grow your business that way!

(3) Try incorporating your marketing activities into your weekly and daily to-do list.  Enter the activities as to-do tasks in your calendar or PDA just like all your appointments and other business activities.

I do this with all my marketing activities. I use Microsoft Outlook and a Pocket PC and its the only way I know Ill keep myself on track. If somethings on my calendar, I treat it like any other meeting or appointment and I do it.

For example, every Wednesday, a little notice pops up to remind me to write my weekly ezine. If that didnt happen Id either be writing it on Mondays at midnight, or it wouldnt get done.

(4) Pick one day per month to review your marketing calendar in detail and to look three months ahead. Whats coming up that you need to prepare for now? What do you need to transfer into your to-do list or PDA to make sure you dont forget to do it?

I usually do this at the end of the month when Im doing all my month-end work ? things like running sales reports, doing billing, and updating my marketing tracking reports.

Make it a habit to review your marketing at the same time you do these tasks. After a few months you won't even have to think about it anymore, it'll become a habit.

(5) Consider hiring an assistant or support person to help. If they can take some of the tasks off your plate that really dont require your expertise, it will free you up to focus on what I call revenue producing activities.

These are things like working with clients, creating products and services and marketing. I couldnt believe the difference it made when I hired some help.

I didnt think I could afford it, but now I dont see how I lasted so long without help!

When you find a way to get back on track with your marketing and you do it on regular basis, it really does become a part of the way you do business.

Suddenly it doesnt seem like marketing anymore. Its just what you do to run your business. Thats when it becomes effortless.

And, that's when you know your business will be continue to be busy and profitable for the long-haul.

(C) Copyright 2005 Debbie LaChusa

Debbie LaChusa

Debbie LaChusa is a marketing veteran with 20 years in the business. After 13 years in the advertising and marketing agency business, Debbie founded DLC Marketing, Inc., a marketing consulting and coaching business. Her goal? To give entrepreneurs and small business owners affordable access to the same high-level strategic marketing and advertising expertise that typically only large companies with big budgets can afford.

Debbie's commitment to making marketing expertise accessible to small business also led her to pursue speaking engagements and teaching. She has spoken at meetings and conventions across the United States and in Canada. She also is on the faculty of Wellcoaches Corporation, where she teaches wellness coach trainees around the world how to successfully market their new coaching practices.

Debbie has written and self-published two marketing workbooks, "A Step-by-Step Marketing Guide" and "A Step-by-Step Marketing Guide for Your Fitness Business" which have sold copies worldwide. Her advice is also featured in Entrepreneur Magazine's "How to Start a Personal Training Business," part of the magazine's Business Start-Up Series. And she is a contributor to the San Diego Business Journal.

Debbie created The 10stepmarketing? System to provide small business owners, coaches, consultants and other independent professionals with all the tools they need to market themselves.

This simple, step-by-step system, features an easy-to-use question-and-answer format that walks business owners through every step they need to take to develop and implement their own marketing plan designed to achieve the success they desire and deserve.

On a more personal note, Debbie LaChusa is a fraternal twin. In 2004 she launched Twin Connections, a web site that celebrates the unique and mysterious bond shared by twins. She collects twin stories and hopes to compile them into a book.